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Paths Not Taken, Part 1

I love reading novels and watching shows or movies that involve parallel worlds (sometimes called alternate universes). Here, the characters visit or view a universe where their counterparts made a different decision in the past making their life so much different in the present. If the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, it could be possible that somewhere in another universe there is a version of me with a totally different life. I often think of these what-if scenarios in my head. What if I did this instead of that? What if this happened instead of that? Well… here’s one.

He may have discovered video games in high school but got bored with them after a while. He joined the staff of the school paper by the suggestion his English teacher. His contributions were mostly reports on school events. He haven’t tried doing interviews that time as he was shy. Was he shy or actually have a mild social anxiety?

Even if he had motion sickness and haven’t tried living on his own, he studied in Baguio City away from home and took up Mass Communication. (One to two hour bus ride to or from home is far by his standards.) It was probably his course load and requirements that made him lose his social anxiety. After graduation, he applied for a job as a reporter for a radio station in San Fernando. The pay was not much but it was a start. As his passion was writing, he also sent his reports on national broadsheets.

Early 2000s, he started writing a news blog. It is mostly covering La Union. He then started monetizing the blog when more people started reading the site. When he started earning more from his blog and article submissions, he quit his job on the radio and made blogging full time. It was a risk but he took it anyway. His his gamble paid off.

His news blog had a good number of followers and readers when it was noticed by a national broadsheet looking to expand their paper’s influence on the internet. He was contacted by the paper and offered him to be a part of the paper’s online website. As the pay was better, he accepted. He made a good influence on the direction of the paper’s website. It was the right fit for him. As of now, he is content but thinking of possibility of further expansion.

And we’re back

This is part one of a series of posts about my what-ifs. This is also the start of “blog every day in April 2015”: #beda2015. I hope I can do this for the whole month. Crossing fingers.

Featured image by Christian Schirm/Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC0 1.0.